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Taking time off is wonderful until the moment you open your email after returning to work. If you work in an email-heavy company, you may have received hundreds of emails while you were out of the office, and now you’re faced with the difficult task of sorting through each one. With Outlook’s clean-up function (introduced in Outlook 2010), you can drastically reduce the number of emails you have to deal with in just a few clicks—whether you're coming back from vacation or you just have too many emails piled up. The clean-up function removes all email replies that are duplicated in a later thread, allowing you to read a single thread instead of dozens of individual emails. To clean up your inbox quickly:

• While viewing your inbox, click the "Clean Up" button, and select "Clean Up Folder."

2. Click the "Clean Up Folder" button in the popup to confirm the action. Outlook will automatically remove all duplicate emails, leaving you with significantly fewer emails to sort through. The clean-up function can be a little disconcerting to use initially. What if it deletes something important like a reply that contained an attachment that was removed in a later thread? Rest assured: the tool is sophisticated and will not delete any emails with attachments or text that aren’t exactly duplicated in later threads, and you can always review deleted items in the trash folder if needed.

Some emails don’t require an immediate response, but they do need to be handled before the time you have scheduled to review items in your to-do folder. These items can still be moved to your to-do folder so they’re not clogging your inbox, but you’ll want to make sure that you have a reminder to take care of them before a deadline. Create a reminder by adding these emails to Outlook’s task list:

• Drag the email and drop it on Outlook’s task list icon.

2. Add a due date and set a date and time to receive a reminder. Save the task. You can now hover your cursor over the task list icon to see a quick view of your task list, organized by due date. Click on the task list icon to open your to-do list and review the respective tasks. If you set a reminder, the task will pop up like a meeting reminder at the specified time. Once the task is complete, mark it as such to remove the task from your to-do list. Open the task by double-clicking it, and click the "Mark Complete" button—or just press the Insert key to quickly mark the item complete. Outlook’s task list is also useful if you’re in the habit of copying yourself on emails as a reminder to follow up, or if you’re emailing someone who is prone to ignoring your requests. Instead of keeping reminders as emails in your inbox, just move them to your to-do folder and add them to your task list.

Spotlight Search also gets a major boost with new features. Spotlight uses intelligence to search photos by location, people, scenes, or objects. Using Live Text, Spotlight can also find text and handwriting in photos. Spotlight now offers web image search and all-new rich results for actors, musicians, TV shows, and movies. The good news is, you can access all these goodies right from the iPhone lock screen. Use the same swipe-down gesture from the lock screen, and Spotlight Search is ready to serve you.